A light house-work-out

Find any cat toys yet?

My husband gets up most mornings way before I do, enters the second bedroom (our home office) and closes the door, meditates for a time, then puts himself through some fitness routine that's a bit of a mystery to me (I'm usually sleeping, but I sometimes lie awake and listen to the strange thumping and grunting coming from the next room); he makes a brief appearance when he emerges from the room, then disappears into the shower. By the time I'm fully awake, he's gone to work. (Who was that sweaty guy?)

I'm not a slug, really I'm not. I'm just a night owl, often staying up until well past midnight, and also a light sleeper (except after about 7 a.m.). When the dog walks into the second bedroom and throws up on the hand-tied Turkish rug at 3 a.m. (the same rug where Craig sits in meditation, etc.), I'm the one who hears it and gets out of bed to clean it up.

But other than cleaning up the occasional dog oops, neither of us does a lot of housework. So the spot where I just cleaned up after the dog is often the cleanest spot on the rug.

I mention all this as a preamble to describing what happens when I try to follow hubby's lead and get a little exercise at home during the day.

As I get ready to roll out my yoga mat on the rug, I notice how much the fur has accumulated there, and set aside the mat to get out the vacuum cleaner instead. While vacuuming the rug, I notice that there's still more fur and dust attempting to hide in the corners and around the base of the bookshelf and other furniture. So I get the broom and the dust mop and round up the dust and fur, sweeping it out to where I can suck it up with the vacuum.

Oh, but look. The bookshelves are dusty, too. I get a rag from the closet and start dusting, first the shelves, then the top of the printer stand, and the printer itself. My, but the dust does accumulate on the picture frames and baseboards, doesn't it?

The cat begins to follow me around once I put the vacuum cleaner away. He no doubt senses that this could be entertaining, especially if I find any of the cat toys that he has lost under the furniture.

Now I have a few dirty rags, I add them to the laundry basket in the bedroom, which is getting pretty full, so I may as well bring it all down to the laundry. Walking down and up stairs isn't a bad workout, anyway, right?

Next thing, I'm sweeping the stairs.

Every notice how, when you clean one thing, everything else looks that much dirtier?

I finally decided that I had had my workout, what with sweeping, dusting, vacuuming, carrying laundry down, cleaning the cat pans as long as I was downstairs, and so forth.

Time for yoga. The cat, of course, thinks I rolled out the mat for him. Still, I manage to get in a few stretching poses and then a shower.

"Asana this," says Tres.

As it turns out, it's not a bad workout, and the house looks pretty good when I'm done. But it took a lot longer than the half hour or so I had intended, so I'm not likely to try again for some time. And by then, the house will need cleaning again.

Craig says that when he does his push-ups, he looks right down at the fur on the rug and it doesn't bother him a bit. It's just as well or he'd end up being late for work.